Sick in Iraq by EM

Unfortunately, I am sick again, and much worse this time. Had to go get the medics up last night to get some help. Feeling better this morning, but after I send off this email I’m going to crawl back into my cot and try to sleep this off.

The problem is that our battalion and the battalion that we are replacing are both here at the same time, so we’re crammed into every little space imaginable. Living so close together is making sure everyone gets sick. Also, there’s so many people, that there is seldom any hot water, so people aren’t terribly clean and/or spend time very cold and wet every day.

We won’t start patrols for a while, I’ll let you know when we do. Our sector is one of the quieter ones, but is also very diverse. It includes a forest ( yes, a forest in Iraq!), a university,(oh boy…politically active young people with knowledge of chemistry and electronics), some ancient ruins (still respected to this day, although they occupy an area of good real-estate in the city they are only used as sheep and goat grazing grounds, even the insurgents seem to respect the area as out-of-bounds), and several city neighborhoods.

Oh, also a lovely section of a local river that has been known, for as long as the locals can remember, as “Shit Creek”….sounds picturesque. I’m not making that up about the creek, the intelligence officer said they’ve tried to get a different name for it from the locals so that the intelligence sergeants didn’t get to say things like “the target is up Shit Creek” in their briefings…but no luck.